Charles Walsh: Unconscionable killing of fish has to stop

Published 8:21 pm, Friday, August 1, 2014

"You should have seen it," the guy on the dock was saying as he tidied up some lines on his boat. "It was really amazing."

He was talking about the mayhem surrounding the recent mid-summer striper blitzes at Montauk Point on Long Island. It was the usual stuff: fish breaking all around the boats, hookups on every cast, double ups, triple ups.

Striper insanity.

Up to that point, my only response to his action-packed report was to mumble the words "wow" and "nice!" and "no kidding" over and over. Usually, I love hearing fishing stories, and stories about massive blitzes are especially thrilling. The only down side to hearing a good striper or bluefish blitz story is the fact that you weren't there to be part it.

But the guy's next line almost caused me to throw up my lunch all over the dock.

"Man," he said as if it were some kind of final triumph, "the lines at the fish-cleaning stations were so long, you couldn't get near them."

What, you might ask, was so stomach churningly awful about that? Isn't the idea of being in the middle of a crazy fish blitz to bring home a cooler or two full of tasty striper filets?

In a word, no.

The image of anglers taking home piles of frozen fish muscle that will in all likelihood sit in their own or a friend's freezer for several months before being thrown out makes my blood pressure go up.

Apparently those folks at the cleaning stations were not aware of the recent studies concerning the serious depletion of the striper populations in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast waters. A New York Times article earlier this year reported that in Massachusetts, where commercial fishing is still (regrettably) allowed, recreational anglers reported "an alarming 85 percent drop in striped bass caught between 2006 and 2011." Connecticut striper fishermen would, if they were honest, have to give a similar estimate.

And don't try that old "oh, it's those evil commercial fishermen who are to blame" thing. Recreational fishing is estimated to kill about twice as many stripers as commercial fishing.

OK, it's time for someone to call for a no-kill rule or at least a gentleman's agreement for letting striped bass live. And since I am here, let that someone be me.

I estimate in the last five years, I have probably caught a few hundred stripers (and I'm a piker compared to some others). All of those beautiful, wild, line-sided babies, every one, went back into the drink relatively unharmed. Granted, the vast majority of the stripers I caught were schoolies under the 28-inch limit. But what keepers there were went back, too. I know I am not alone in this sentiment.

There is nothing wrong with taking the occasional bluefish for dinner, but it is August, the month of the big bluefish tournaments. As anyone who had pursued bluefish this spring and summer can attest, the most remarkable thing about that pursuit is that there are so few bluefish to pursue. Even the usually wildly optimistic Marine Division of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection admits in its fishing report for last week that the bluefish fishing season "is still not consistent (read: really bad) for this time of year."

It is time that the fishing club boards, tournament organizers and other fishing officials take positive steps to at least limit the bluefish slaughter that happens in some of the tournaments. It might be some version of the way the freshwater bass tournament organizers limit killing by using live wells to hold fish until the heaviest catch is determined. That would not be easy with bluefish, but it is worth a look.

A few years ago, I took a lot of heat from tournament anglers for suggesting that the big multi-club tournaments (are you listening, WICC?) go all catch-and-release. OK, that's not easy either, but let's do something to limit the unconscionable killing of fish.

If you really want to eat a striper, get one that's been raised on a farm.